I took an Adventure Korea tour to see the Black Raspberry Festival in Geochang. Activities included picking berries & drinking the berry wine, touring the festival grounds (including live eel catching), a dance party, and shellfish collecting.

Basically, the 45 foreigners provided live entertainment for the small town of Geochang for the entire weekend. We were followed everywhere by Koreans and their cameras. An amusing weekend, indeed.

After a 3-hour bus ride from Seoul, we landed in Geochang. We began the day by enjoying some traditional Korean games and sampling the local black raspberries, one of Geochang's best-known exports.

One of the biggest and most famous of South Korean summer festivals, the Boryeong Mud Festival draws tens of thousands of Koreans and foreign expats alike to Deachon Beach on the Boryeong coast (about 2.5 hours away from Seoul). The festival organizers tout the health and beauty benefits of the supposedly famous mud from this region ("rich in minerals!") as the reason why the event is so successful, but my impression of the event is that a lot of people just really, really like almost any excuse to play in the mud.